Ogre Miniatures

Ogre Collection

2011-08-23T10:32:00.001-04:00

I thought I'd put together a list of all my Ogres, and then I decided as long as I was going to do that, I might as well put up pictures of them as well...

Ogre Mark I

Ogre Mark II

Ogre Mark III

Ogre Mark III-B

Ogre Mark IV

Ogre Mark V

Ogre Mark VI

Fencer A & B

Doppelsoldner

Vulcan and 2 drones

Ninja

Ogrethulhu's

destroyed Ogre

and a group shot or two

concept tanks: Tank concept by Roberto Robert

2011-08-22T12:13:00.002-04:00

There is some truly amazing artwork on here, some are very Ogre-like.

http://concepttanks.blogspot.com/

I especially like this one:

It looks like an Ogre to me, just no tower. Maybe an alternative Ogre.

Ogre 6e Postcard handed out at Origins 2011

2011-06-28T09:14:00.000-04:00

I scanned the 6e postcard from Origins 2011, images below. These were on the registration tables, I only saw about a dozen while I was there for all 4 days, not sure how many got handed out.

Cheap Ogre Buildings Part II

2011-04-04T20:12:00.001-04:00

I finally got busy and finished my PVC pipe buildings for Ogre. After some sanding and a couple of coats of primer, I decided to go with a khaki color to try and simulate concrete buildings. I made up some signs, doors, and windows in Microsoft Visio and printed them out on a color laser printer.

I used some "peel and stick" paper left over from another project to print them on, so all I had to do was stick them to the buildings.

At this scale, doors and windows are pretty much "painted on" anyway.

I probably should have made the Weapons Testing building look damaged in some way, oh well, I still have plenty of PVC left...

They're a little too "clean" for Ogre, I'll have to airbrush some weathering on them.

Ogre 6e Announced from SJG

2011-03-13T10:50:00.006-04:00

Steve Jackson Games announced the new version of Ogre on their website yesterday, boy am I stoked!

Another cheap Ogre buildings project

2010-09-27T10:00:00.000-04:00

In my seemingly endless pursuit of 1/300 scale (6mm) buildings for my Ogre and Battletech games, I have started yet another project using easily obtained materials.

I had been considering the construction of some "Quonset hut" looking buildings for a while, and during a trip to Lowe's I had an inspiration in the plumbing aisle. There was a display of PVC pipe, pre-cut in 2' lengths.

I picked one up and looked it over and thought "If I sliced this lengthwise and capped the ends, it would look like a Quonset hut/aircraft hangar".

So I bought some.

PVC pipe is sized by the internal diameter (for example, 2"), so the outside diameter is always somewhat larger. I bought three 2' sections in 3 different sizes: 2.5 (2.875")", 3" (3.5"), and 4" (4.5").

I figure the largest size will be an Ogre factory/garage, since it scales out to be about 112' wide. I have an idea in the back of my head about an Ogre "assembly line" with multiple buildings in line with one another.

After getting them home I had a moment's hesitation about how I was going to cut them lengthwise, a bandsaw seemed like the best option, but I don't own one. Luckily a coworker of mine does have one, and he zipped them all in half for me. I used my power miter saw to chop them off into suitable lengths, and then sanded down the rough edges.

In my materials storage area I had a couple of large plastic sheets that I scrounged from somewhere, they were white and about 4' square and maybe 1/8" thick. I scored a line down one sheet and snapped off a piece for testing.

I knew from some past experiences that PVC pipe can be hard to glue, you can't glue it with epoxy, superglue, PVA, or anything else the average modeler has on his workbench. In plumbing they use a purple glue and a special cleaner to make the joints watertight.

I visited Lowe's again, and discovered they offer a glue for sticking PVC to almost all other plastics. The glue really stinks, be sure to use it in a well-ventilated area, but it stuck my test pieces together so well that the plastic failed before the glue joint.

I cut some appropriately sized rectangles out of the plastic and glued all of the ends on at once, to minimize the number of times I had to open the glue can. I was undecided on doors/windows, whether to cut them out or paint them on, so I left the ends solid for now.

After letting them dry for 24 hours or so, I used my Dremel tool with a cutoff disk to remove most of the excess plastic, then sanded the remainder using the Dremel and some sandpaper. You have to sand slowly to keep the plastic from heating up and melting though. I used some fine sandpaper to go over the pipe surfaces so the primer would hopefully adhere a bit better.

I used a light coat of gray primer to bring out any defects so I could sand them out, then primed them again when I was satisfied with the finish.

The next step will be to work out the door and window options, and then get them painted.

3D Ogre Mapboard

2010-08-02T10:31:00.001-04:00

I was looking through some of my Ogre pictures, and found the pics of the 3D Ogre map board project, which I apparently never actually posted. So here they are, with some commentary about the construction process.

I had been thinking about constructing a 3D Ogre board, replicating the original map, ever since I had picked up a box of Heroscape tiles for next to nothing at a thrift store. The HS hexes are about 1.5" across the flats, so they are a pretty good fit for Ogre miniatures, except of course, for the Ogres.

I decided to create a quick test piece to see if the Heroscape tiles would look good painted and textured.

It looked pretty good, so I decided to proceed with the project. I assembled a hex map (15 x 22 hexes) from the Heroscape tiles, and glued them together. I mounted (lots of white glue) the assembled map on a piece of a hollow core door that was in the garage for ease of transportation during the painting process.

I formed hexes and ridges from Sculpey II and installed them in the appropriate locations. I painted the whole board with a flat gray latex paint (leftover from a home improvement project). While attempting to accelerate the drying process, I had a slight mishap with a heat lamp and melted one corner of the board and had to replace it.

I found some leftover green latex (semigloss) paint from another project, and used that to put a couple of coats on the whole board to fill in the cracks between the tile pieces, and to give the railroad ballast (next step) something to stick to.

Between coats I used more white glue to fill in any small holes between the Sculpey and the hex tiles.

I let the board dry for 24 hours before proceeding to the next step. I had some model railroad ballast left over from another project (noticing a trend here?) and decided to use that to give the board a rough, sandy textured surface. I put another coat of green on the board and while it was still wet I sprinkled the ballast over the whole thing.

I let that dry for a few hours then tilted the board up and let the excess ballast fall off. I recycled that ballast for the next step. There were a few bare patches here and there, so I sprayed them with thinned white glue and spread more ballast on them. After a couple of cycles, I had a board that looked like the surface of the moon.

I put the board away in a safe place to let it dry for a few days. When I was sure it was dry, I used a large paintbrush to "scrub" the surface to remove the excess ballast and then sprayed the whole board with more thinned white glue to hold everything together. After another 24 hour drying cycle, I got out my airbrush and sprayed the whole board a reddish brown color, then added lighter and darker highlights, attempting to match the original Ogre map colors.

This process took a fairly long time, once I was satisfied with the the base colors, I started adding washes to darken some areas and dry brushed the crater walls and ridges to make them stand out.

I painted the border around the hexes black, and then applied several coats of clear flat to seal the paint and protect the surface.

I set up some miniatures on the board to see how everything looked, I think it turned out pretty well.

A few more pictures capturing some details:

Total cost for this project was about $20.00 plus a lot of my time. I may do a GEV board someday, but I'll need more Heroscape tiles and I have to think about the water surface effect.

Ogre Infantry Painting

2010-06-16T13:33:00.001-04:00

I spent a few hours last night working on painting my Ogre infantry miniatures. I had painted a batch of them a long time ago, but had never been happy with the bases, which I had simply painted a couple of shades of green. I was looking at them the other night in preparation for more infantry painting, and decided I hated the bases. They looked like the infantry were standing on a golf course. Not likely in the Ogre universe. Not impossible, but not likely. If they did fight on a golf course I doubt that Chem Lawn would have been out recently to spray for weeds anyway.

So I painted over all of the green bases with a light gray. Looking through my supply of terrain materials, I found a partial container of Woodland Scenics Fine Ballast, in light gray. Hmmmm.

After cleaning, basing, and painting the new batch of infantry, I painted their bases to match the originals. I let everything dry overnight. The next day I made up a 50% white glue (PVA) and 50% water mix and painted this mixture onto an infantry base with a small brush. I covered the entire base with the glue mixture, making sure to get right up to the figures' boots.

I poured a small amount of the ballast into a plastic cup and then set the infantry base into the ballast and shook it around to get full coverage. I left the stand there for a couple of minutes and then pulled it out, and shook off the excess ballast. After a couple of taps on the base with the handle of a hobby knife to dislodge any stray ballast bits, I set it aside to dry. This process was repeated for the remainder of the infantry stands. When I was finished, I moved the whole pile to a nearby table and let a small fan blow on them overnight to speed the drying process.

Once they were dry I wet down the ballast with a thin black wash, to add depth and sort of glue everything together some more. Put them back in front of the fan to dry some more. Once they are dry they will get a spray of Dull Cote and that should finish up the Ogre infantry for the near future.

A couple of shots of my workbench here...

Fans, fans, everywhere...

2010-06-11T09:37:00.000-04:00

OK, the basement is almost dried out. A few game-related casualties. I had a small box of games headed to the Origins 2010 auction, and I had left the box on the floor. Very unusual for me.

The box for GDW's TacForce got wet on one side, but the contents are fine, it's drying out. The INWO SubGenius card game is a total loss, as is the large deck of novelty playing cards that I have had for 30 years and barely used. A reference book about miniature dachshunds bit the dust too. It had apparently fallen on the floor and then been kicked under the bookshelf. All in all, not too bad.

The dehumidifier has been working overtime, and the basement is no longer damp. The only traces of the water that I can see are some darker areas on the bottom 3" of the cement block walls. I have several fans blowing along the walls and move them around as needed. Of course, the basement sounds like an airport with a bunch of Cessnas waiting for takeoff...

The insurance adjuster came out and took pictures of everything and measured the areas that had had carpeting. Hopefully I'll be getting a check soon, with something extra for cleaning up the mess. Many of my neighbors called Stanley Steemer or ServPro and had them come out and take care of things. They had to wait for a few days though, and I wanted the water gone NOW!

Since I saved the insurance company a bunch of money on the cleanup, they should be willing to give me something for my time and effort...

Water, water, everywhere...

2010-06-07T13:32:00.000-04:00

I was awakened Sunday morning (June 6th, 2010) at about 6:00 am by the sound of rain. I noticed that my alarm clock and the cable box were blank, instead of displaying the time as they usually did.

Apparently a storm had blown into the area, and knocked out power to our entire neighborhood. Oh well, I thought, maybe I'll get to sleep a bit longer... wait... no power means no electricity, no electricity means that the sump pump in the basement will not work, and all of my gaming stuff is in the basement!

I got dressed and went downstairs to find about 3" of water in the basement. Hmmm... I always wanted an indoor pool, but not like this.

First things first. Most of the electric appliances in the basement are plugged into power strips, which are on the floor, and are now under water. I waded into the water and found my 18v flashlight over my workbench and switched it on so I could see. I started unplugging all the power cords and lifted the power strips out of the water and put them on a chair to drain.

There is a floor drain in the center of the basement that goes to the sewer system, and water was steadily flowing into it, so I figured I could start pushing the water that direction, hopefully the power would be restored soon, then the sump pump could finish the job.

I spent the next few hours sweeping water towards the drain and picking up items off the floor so they could start drying out. Fortunately I keep the vast majority of my game stuff on shelving and in plastic storage containers. There were some casualties however.

At about 8:30 the lights came on and the sump pump started doing its job. I continued sweeping while I listened to the pump going until about 9:30, when it finally shut off. I spent another few hours cutting up the carpeting in the finished side of the basement and hauling it out to the curb. I noticed several of my neighbors conducting similar activities, so I know the outage must have been fairly widespread.

There were still a lot of puddles of water all over the basement, so I got out the shop vac, converted it for wet work, and started vacuuming up the water. I spent pretty much all day Sunday doing this. When the shop vac got full I emptied it into the sump pit so it could be pumped outside as well.

Currently, there are 4-5 large box fans, several smaller fans, and a dehumidifier going full blast in the basement. The floor is starting to look almost dry, and the water marks on the walls are going away.

I contacted the insurance company, and they will be out to look at things in a few days. I'm still taking inventory of the damages...

Emptying the Closet of Unpainted Shame

2010-06-02T10:40:00.000-04:00

Well, it's done. I finally pulled out the last of my Ogre miniatures and painted them! Every Ogre is painted, every G.E.V., every heavy tank, all of it.

Some statistics:

Ogres (various types): 35 total
Vehicles: Combine (386), Paneuropean (606)
Other (12)

Yes, that's over 1000 miniatures for a game that's what, 33 years old? I should probably make time to play it more often.

Oh yeah, just found a huge pile of unpainted Ogre infantry... sigh....

Well, maybe tonight I'll clean them up, glue them on bases, prime them...

Origins 2010 Convention Musings

2010-05-26T09:29:00.000-04:00

Well, there's only about 30 days to go before Origins, time to start organizing my Ogre stuff for the trip. I've pulled all of the cases of Ogre miniatures off the shelves in the basement, located my storage tubs of terrain and buildings, and found my backpack.

Yes, every year I take a backpack with me to Origins, I find it very useful for carrying all the miscellaneous items that one needs at a convention. Digital camera, laptop, snacks, etc.

On the subject of snacks:

I always find it amazing the prices that the Columbus Convention Center charges for candy bars and 20oz bottles of Pepsi. Come on, $3.50 for a bottle that I can buy in any convenience store for ~$1.49? If I buy a 6-pack at the grocery store I pay less than $1.00 a bottle.

Maybe I should publish an article about how to save money at a game convention...

Park a little farther away in a free parking area, walk a bit farther to the con.

Have a cooler in your car, filled with ice. Stock it with snacks and soda. Save a lot of $$$$. Walk out to the car a couple of times a day and restock your backpack.

Use the backpack to smuggle in your snacks so the convention center security guys won't throw you out.

Don't eat meals inside the convention center. They have a captive audience, and they know it. For Origins specifically, I suggest the French Market, 1 block west of the Convention Center. Great food, cheap, and some of the best pizza I have ever eaten. I make it a point every year to get pizza there at least once.

Living near Columbus has been very helpful for my Origins attendance. If Origins was out of state I doubt that I would go very often. I've attended the con every year since 1996.

I make it to Gen Con every few years, but only because it is 4 hours away in Indianapolis.

Ogre Miniatures CRT update

2010-05-07T10:35:00.000-04:00

I've been looking at the Ogre CRT lately, it just seems a bit outdated to me. I'm wondering if it might not be a bad idea to punch it up a little. I played around in Excel with the existing CRT and then expanded it to look like this:

Bender Mini

2009-11-21T20:36:00.000-05:00

Found this at Origins 2009, need to finish painting him someday...

1/300 Sci-Fi Buildings from Scratch (well almost)

2009-08-28T20:16:00.000-04:00

I attended Origins in Columbus this year (as i do every year), and noticed a fairly nice looking city table that Reaper had set up for CAV2. On that table there were a lot of paper buildings, and a couple made from something that looked familiar...

Now where have we seen these before...?

Plastic electrical boxes! Now how come I never thought of that before? Easily available at local big box home improvement stores and cheap too.

I did some price comparisons and found there was virtually no difference in price at any of the major stores. So I bought a few to experiment with. The small 2 bay boxes pictured above were $1.86 each. I also found a few useful items in the plastic plumbing aisle.

Step One - Remove the nails with a pair of pliers, they just pull right out.

Step Two - Remove the bar code sticker. This was easily accomplished with the application of a little heat from a hair dryer and a #11 X-acto blade.

Step Three - Remove the "wings" along the sides. I use a dremel tool with a cutoff wheel at low speed to carve the wings off and smooth the remaining areas. I used some fine sandpaper as well.

I decided to open one end of this one up and turn it into an Ogre "garage". A couple of razor saw cuts vertically...

...and then snap the door piece off and clean it up. I reglued it in the open position with some gap-filling superglue.

A quick primer coat of white to show any defects...

Hmmm... roof looks kind of plain. How about a ventilator from my bits box?

A couple coats of "stone" spray paint and some cardstock solar panels that I ran off on the color laser printer...

And that's it.

JR Miniatures 1/300 Sci Fi Buildings

2009-07-19T12:20:00.001-04:00

These are a bunch of the 1/300 JR Miniatures buildings that I used for Ogre at Origins 2009.

Ogre Miniatures Measuring Sticks

2008-10-26T21:10:00.000-04:00

I'm an old school miniatures gamer, none of those newfangled laser rangefinders or tape measures for me.

I made a dozen of these measuring sticks from 1/8" wood dowels a while back.
Construction is very simple, cut off a 16" section of dowel, then mark off the following measurements from one end - 8", 10", 12", and 14". Since OM uses 2" for it's (hex) ranges, this stick gives you easy measurements of all of the weapon ranges and vehicle movements.
Range 1 - 2"
up to
Range 8 - 16"
I spray the whole stick white, then mask off the sections that need to stay white and spray the rest black. A shot of clear acrylic finishes the job.

Ogre Pictures

2008-09-01T14:57:00.001-04:00

Here's a quick shot of the Ogre family...

Ogre Army Pictures

2008-08-31T23:06:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about taking pictures of ALL of my Ogre minis for a while now, so here goes...

Mushroom Cloud!

2008-07-24T20:40:00.002-04:00

I've been working on making a nuclear explosion marker for the game table, out of expanding foam. I'll post some step by step instructions eventually, but it was pretty easy.

Still working on trying to get the colors just right...

The 40-Howitzer Defense in Ogre

2008-05-25T14:36:00.000-04:00

OK, I may have gone a little overboard on artillery.....

Traveller Grav Tank

2008-05-20T20:33:00.000-04:00

OK, It's not an Ogre miniature, but it is very cool...

Painting a Zuzzy mat for Ogre Miniatures play

2008-05-04T19:08:00.000-04:00

I recently obtained a large (4' x 6') Zuzzy terrain mat, and have been painting it for some time now. This picture is what the mat looked like before I started painting it:

I brushed a wash of earth brown over the whole mat, next time I'll spray it with my airbrush...

Next I airbrushed a thin black wash over the whole mat, concentrating in the darker areas ...

Now for the fun part, I picked several colors to correspond to certain types of terrain on the mat, and painted all of them. It ended up looking very paint by numbers...

Now I airbrushed more light washes of black over the areas I wanted to be darker:

After letting the mat dry a few days, I started drybrushing the various areas to bring out the details, this is the final result:

Finally, a closeup of one of the volcanic-looking crater areas, I also picked out a few of the individual rocks in different colors to break things up a bit:

I love this mat! I can't wait to start playing games on it.